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The organizers of mundialchess.com wish to address a statement to all its users and participants regarding two major changes to the 1st International Online Advanced Chess Tournament.

1 - The final modification of the tournament's start date, which is now scheduled for January 8, 2010. Whereupon the official registration period will remain open until January 3, 2010.

2 - An important change in the site for the final awards and special prizes for those classified in the top eight positions from each tournament. The organizers of mundialchess.com are committed to the philosophy and main idea of this tournament, which is to take any player in the world (regardless of their level) closer to the best tournaments in the chess arena and to feel at 100% the play of those with the greatest strength and international prestige. A change of venue for said event has been inevitable.

For its 1st edition it was decided that the place and festival elected would be the VIII International Chess Festival in Benidorm (Gran Hotel Bali) which now and for reasons beyond our control, will not provide that environment, thus the festival or tournament in which that event will take place is currently being studied by the organizers of mundialchess.com.

All this will be announced and published in the coming days on our website, as well as in other media. Also, all registered users and players will receive the newsletter according to each news item.

Similarly, we confirm that the player who will face the lucky winners is the current number one on the FIDE ranking, Veselin Topalov.

Fees and promotions for all registered users remain intact. The full year access to the playing zone, as well as additional promotions (which are included with your registration), will be enacted after the tournament has ended. At the same time, users who want to try our play zone will have FREE access until the tournament's start date.

For more information or any enquiry you may have, please use our support ticket system

Sending spam (unsolicited commercial email) is not permitted through our network. The information contained in this email is confidential to mundialchess.com, being for the exclusive use of the above target. The incorrect transmission of this message never supposed to surrender your privacy. If you read this message and the recipient is not identified or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the recipient, or have received this communication in error, we inform you that any disclosure is prohibited, distribution or reproduction of this communication, and we ask you to notify us and return the original message to the address above. This message is sent in accordance with new legislation on e-mail: by section 301, paragraph (a) (2) (C) of S.1618 under Decree S.1618 Title 3ro. 105 adopted by the congress of the international regulations on SPAM, this e-mail may not be considered as SPAM includes a form to be removed.

It?s not my idea to advertise the tournament of a big and powerfulcompany, but over the past days and weeks I wondered quite often, whythere has been no note and no discussion on the ?1st InternationalOnline Advanced Chess Tournament? on http://www.mundialchess.com with prize funds of more than 130,000 Euros, starting on October 5th.

Fora while I was not quite sure, how the organizers define ?advancedchess? (they even spoke of ?Freistilschach?!) as they chose the strangetime format of 10m+1s per game and player and as in an earlier document they wrote:

?GAMECONTROL: There shall be an arbitration committee composed ofCounsellors, GM and International Arbiters who may be qualified to determine the loss of the game being deemed to have received any aid.The Committee may act on its own motion or upon complaints laid by aparticipant. For more information go to the MundialChess.com SportsDiscipline Rules."

As I saw yesterday, they may have read my request - they deleted the text in bold type, so it seems they are reallyplanning an Advanced Chess tour. Though there will still be much ?GameControl?, as e.g. players are not allowed to chat with other players during their games.

Anyway,as for anyone experienced in computer chess this seems to be anexcellent opportunity to win some thousand Euros, I expect that many ofYOU ? esp. many freestylers ? will like to have a try. There are three categories with the following top cash prizes:

A) without FIDE-Elo up to FIDE-Elo 1500 (29,312 Euro, rank 1-4),

B) up to FIDE-Elo 2200 (25,554 Euro, rank 1-4) and

C) FIDE-Elo 2200+ (20,293 Euro, rank 1-4).

In addition there are more cash prizes and also special prizes.

Probablythey expect the most players joining category A; while I find it funnyto consider that this most probably will also be the hardest group interms of computer chess

Now, there are two reasons why I am posting this:

a)Our own scheduling plans for a freestyle tour as proposed by privatesponsor ?Highendman? (and may be InfinityChess as co-sponsor) have tocount with a strong interest in the mundialchess tour between Oct. 5thand November 10th. I suggest, we should definitely not start before the end of this tour.

b) It is of general interest forall freestylers and probably also computer chess fans to watch thisevent, to discuss the concept and may be to join in (registration feeis 40 Euro).